Kimono eBook

One night in a dream she saw his body carried past
her, limp and bleeding. She screamed in her sleep.
Sadako awoke, terrified.

“What is the matter?”

“I dreamed of Geoffrey, my husband. Perhaps
he is killed in the war.”

“Do not say that,” said Sadako. “It
is unlucky to speak of death. It troubles the
ghosts. I have told you this house is haunted.”

Certainly for Asako the Fujinami mansion had lost
its charm. Even the beautiful landscape was besieged
by horrible thoughts. Every day two or three
of the Yoshiwara women died of disease and neglect,
so Sadako said and therefore every day the invisible
population of the Fujinami garden must be increasing,
and the volume of their curses must be gathering in
intensity. The ghosts hissed like snakes in the
bamboo grove. They sighed in the pine branches.
They nourished the dwarf shrubs with their pollution.
Beneath the waters of the lake the corpses—­women’s
corpses—­were laid out in rows. Their
thin hands shook the reeds. Their pale faces
rose at night to the surface, and stared at the moon.
The autumn maples smeared the scene with infected
blood; and the stone foxes in front of the shrine of
Inari sneered and grinned at the devil world which
their foul influence had called into being through
the black witchcraft of lechery, avarice and disease.

CHAPTER XXIV

In this world
If there were no
Ox-cart (i.e. Buddhist religion),
How should we escape
From the (burning) mansion of our thought?

During October, the whole family of the Fujinami removed
from Tokyo for a few days in order to perform their
religious duties at the temple of Ikegami. Even
grandfather Gennosuke emerged from his dower-house,
bringing his wife, O Tsugi. Mr. Fujinami Gentaro
was in charge of his own wife, Shidzuye San, of Sadako
and of Asako. Only Fujinami Takeshi, the son
and heir, with his wife Matsuko, was absent.

There had been some further trouble in the family
which had not been confided to Asako, but which necessitated
urgent steps for the propitiation of religious influences.
The Fujinami were followers of the Nichiren sect of
Buddhism. Their conspicuous devotion and their
large gifts to the priests of the temple were held
to be causes of their ever-increasing prosperity.
The dead Fujinami, down from that great-great-grandfather
who had first come to seek his fortune in Yedo, were
buried at Ikegami. Here the priests gave to each
hotoke (Buddha or dead person) his new name,
which was inscribed on small black tablets, the ihai.
One of these tablets for each dead person was kept
in the household shrine at Tokyo, and one in the temple
at Ikegami.